Chosen Poems of Thomas Hardy

by Thomas Hardy (Editor), James Gibson (Editor)

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Genres: Poetry

157 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2005

About the author

Thomas Hardy, OM, was an English author of the naturalist movement, although in several poems he displays elements of the previous romantic and enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural. He regarded himself primarily as a poet and composed novels mainly for financial gain.

The bulk of his work, set mainly in the semi-fictional land of Wessex, delineates characters struggling against their passions and circumstances. Hardy's poetry, first published in his 50s, has come to be as well regarded as his novels, especially after The Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

The term cliffhanger is considered to have originated with Thomas Hardy's serial novel A Pair of Blue Eyes in 1873. In the novel, Hardy chose to leave one of his protagonists, Knight, literally hanging off a cliff staring into the stony eyes of a trilobite embedded in the rock that has been dead for millions of years. This became the archetypal — and literal — cliff-hanger of Victorian prose.

Excerpted from Wikipedia.

Reviews

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent introduction to Thomas Hardy’s poems. The book has an introduction and explanatory notes about the unfamiliar and local dialect words used in the poems. There is also illustrations and a chronological list of his life from 1840-1928.

Hardy’s two favorite subjects were love and the passing of time with a melancholy flavor. After attacks on the last book he wrote Jude the Obscure he spent the rest of his life writing poetry that reflected his views of life and love of nature as well as the grief he felt with the death of his first wife and how they had grown apart.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poems mainly dour or melancholy, but what else would you expect of Hardy? There are some verses that tell of the new life of Spring and the warmth of Summer, but they inevitably give way to the dimming and decay of Autumn and the cold and death of Winter.

Some of the poems are told from the point of view of characters from Hardy's novels, one being in the voice of Tess from Tess of the D'Urbervilles, which give a little insight into their thoughts.

The sections I found most affecting were those written by Hardy in his later years, widowed and mourning his wife, missing her presence and the way she moved about their home; reflecting upon the lives of his parents and grandparents, long gone with only him to remember them as they were when they lived. Hardy also loved the wild animals that visited his garden and his many pets, though typically he reflects upon the harshness of their lives, or his loss of the little companions of his hearth.

I feel that I need to be prepared to read Hardy - either in that Gothic frame of mind which seeks a sympathetic echo of its own melancholy, or in a less fantastical mood, when an empathetic spirit speaks from the page and offers the comfort of a shared loss.

[Eimhir Robins · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was so easy to read and I really recommend reading Hardy poetry if you want to read something classic, but not something that's going to confuse the hell out of you. My favourites were probably "Shelly's Skylark" and "An August Midnight"

[Vera Schofield · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very insitefull

[Lewis 🧗 · Rating 4 out of 5]

classic and peak poetry tbh